Many Christians and non-Christians misunderstand the relationship between morality and religion. Many mistakenly believe that morality is the same thing as religion and, therefore, mistakenly believe that they should not advocate for policies that reflect their moral beliefs. But morals and religion are not the same, and basing our decisions on public policies, laws, or elections on beliefs that derive from religious convictions does not constitute an unconstitutional establishment of a state religion.

All laws reflect or embody someone’s morality. The moral beliefs of people who hold theistic worldviews are no less valid in the public square than the moral beliefs of those who hold atheistic worldviews—which, of course, are faith-based also. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment was intended to prevent the establishment of a state religion, not to prevent religious beliefs from informing political decisions.

People from diverse faith traditions or no faith could all arrive at the same position on a particular public policy. For example, although Orthodox Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Baptists, and atheists may all oppose abortion because they value human life, the reasons for that valuation of life differ. If there is a secular purpose for the law (e.g., to protect incipient human life), then voting for it does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

The sources of the various parties’ desires to protect incipient life are not the concern of the government. It would be not only absurd but also unethical for the government to try to ascertain the motives and beliefs behind anyone’s opposition to abortion and even more unethical for the government to assert that only those who have no religious faith may vote on abortion laws. Such an assertion would most assuredly violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

The religion clauses of the First Amendment were intended to protect religion from the intrusive power of the state, not the reverse. The Establishment Clause states that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.” That does not mean religious convictions are prohibited from informing political values and decisions. To expect or demand that political decisions be divorced from personal religious beliefs is an untenable, unconscionable breach of the intent of the First Amendment which also includes the oft-neglected Free Exercise Clause which states that Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion.

Legal theorist Michael Perry explains:

“[F]orcing religious arguments to be restated in other terms asks a citizen to ‘bracket’ religious convictions from the rest of her personality, essentially demanding that she split off a part of her self … to bracket [religious convictions] would be to bracket—indeed, to annihilate—herself. And doing that would preclude her—the particular person she is—from engaging in moral discourse with other members of society.”

To paraphrase Richard Neuhaus, that which is political is moral and that which is moral, for religious people, is religious. It is no less legitimate to have political decisions shaped by religion than by psychology, philosophy, scientism, or self-serving personal desire.

If allowing religious beliefs to shape political decisions represents a violation of the Establishment Clause and an inappropriate commingling of religion and government, then American history is rife with egregiously unconstitutional actions, for religious convictions have impelled some of our most significant social, political, and legal changes including the abolition of slavery, antiwar movements, opposition to capital punishment, and the passage of civil rights legislation.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is replete with references to his Christian faith which informed his belief about the inherent dignity, value, and rights of African Americans, a belief which he lost his life to see enshrined in law. He wrote what would now certainly generate howls of opposition:

How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.  To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.

“Progressives” have no objection to people of faith participating in the democratic process so long as their views comport with “progressive” positions. Liberals never cried foul when Quakers or Catholics opposed the Vietnam war because of their religious convictions, and liberals do not object that Catholic opposition to the death penalty represents a violation of the “separation of church and state”–a phrase not found in the Constitution.

I don’t recall any “progressives” objecting when Senator Rob Portman and former president Barack Obama cited their religious beliefs in defense of their radical shifts in position on homosexual faux-marriage. Portman said,

The overriding message of love and compassion that I take from the Bible, and certainly the Golden Rule, and the fact that I believe we are all created by our maker, that has all influenced me in terms of my change on this issue.

After his flip-flop—er, “evolution” on faux-marriage, Obama, like Portman, cited the Bible as his justification:

When we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know? Treat others the way you’d want to be treated.

In contrast, when conservative people of faith participate in the political process, citing their religion as the source of their judgments, suddenly the Establishment Clause has been violated.

Apparently neither Portman nor Obama think much about what the Bible says about sex, marriage, or repentance. And apparently, neither Portman nor Obama understand the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule does not require Christians to affirm all the desires, beliefs, and actions of all humans. It requires Christians to treat others as they—disciples of Christ—want to be treated as disciples of Christ.

And what should disciples of Christ desire? They should desire to follow God’s teaching more closely every day. They should desire to be willing to die to self and to take up their crosses daily. They should want their brothers and sisters in Christ to hold them accountable for their embrace of sin.

What the government must not do is impose laws exclusively religious in nature like Sharia laws. There should be no laws requiring the observance of any particular religion. No laws governing baptismal practices or Communion. No laws requiring prayer or circumcision. But, for example, people whose faith points to the worth of all people may legitimately work toward enacting laws that oppose capital punishment, euthanasia, or abortion. People whose religious beliefs include pacifism may legitimately work toward preventing or stopping military engagements.

No one is legally, constitutionally, ethically, or morally obligated to divorce their faith from their political decisions.

Richard Neuhaus argues persuasively in his book The Naked Public Square that a polity denuded of religion will be clothed soon enough in some other system that functions as religion by providing “normative ethics.” A democratic republic cannot exist without objective normative ethics that render legitimate the delimitation or circumscription of individual rights.

Historically, the sources of the absolute, transcendent, objective, universal truths that render legitimate our legal system have been “the institutions of religion that make claims of ultimate or transcendent meaning.”

Neuhaus argues that when religion is utterly privatized and eliminated as a “source of transcendence that gives legitimate and juridical direction and form, something else will necessarily fill the void, and that force will be the state.”

If the body politic claims there are no absolutes or delegitimizes religion as an arbiter of right and wrong, or good and evil, then the state will fill the vacuum, relativizing all values, and rendering this relativization absolute.

Lawmaking absent an understanding that there exist moral truths that are objective and universal would represent an illegitimate and hubristic arrogation of power.

What sense does outrage at human rights violations make if we assert there are no universal, transcendent, eternal, objective truths? And if we agree that these truths exist, that they transcend the subjective opinions of any particular individual, then what is their source other than a supernatural, eternal, transcendent being?

There are numerous factors that have resulted in a diminished valuation or recognition of the essential place of a belief in God as the source of transcendent truth in American society and politics, one of which is our remarkable cultural diversity. A healthy respect for the pluralism in America, however, need not and should not degenerate into what retired Campbell University law professor Lynn R. Buzzard describes as a “religion of secularism, excluding religion from participation in the pluralism.”

Princeton University law professor Robert George explains that our cultural degradation has, at least in part, resulted from an “orthodox secularism [that] stands for the strict absolute separation of not only church and state, but also faith and public life.”

Allowing religious institutions and ideas to inform our understanding of right and wrong, which is a necessary precursor to making legislative and juridical decisions, does not represent a violation of the Establishment Clause. Indeed, as Samuel Silver explains, “The government, as defined by the First Amendment and explained by its author James Madison, must remain neutral between various sects of religion, but it is not required to remain neutral between religion and irreligion.”

Prohibiting religiously derived understandings of right and wrong to shape political decisions, would, however, represent a violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Buzzard writes that “Free Exercise will not be construed as merely creating a zone of non-governmental interference or the creation of an exemption from conscience-opposed activity, but the opportunity to be full partners in the pluralism of our day.”

To leftists, the idea of a separation of church and state no longer points to the importance of protecting religious freedom from the intrusive power of the state but instead refers to coercively eradicating theologically orthodox religious expression from the public square. Only secular or theologically heterodox worldviews, which are as shaped by myopic, dogmatic, unproved assumptions as secularists claim theologically orthodox religious worldviews are, will be tolerated in our pretend-tolerant society.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Do-Christians-Regularly-Violate-the-Separation-of-Church-and-State.mp3

Remember last July when CNN’s homosexual “journalist” Don Lemon said, “Here’s the thing, Jesus Christ—if … you believe in Jesus Christ—admittedly was not perfect when he was here on this Earth”? Apparently, Lemon forgot these verses about Jesus:

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.

He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Well, Lemon’s at it again—that is, demonstrating his biblical ignorance. This time, in response to a question from Meghan McCain about the Vatican saying it won’t bless same-sex unions, Lemon responded,

The Catholic Church and many other churches really need to reexamine themselves and their teachings because that it not what God is about. God is not about hindering people or even judging people. … I would say to the pope and the Vatican and all Christians and Catholics … go out and meet people and try to understand people and do what the Bible and what Jesus actually said—if you believe in Jesus—and that is to love your fellow man and to judge not lest ye be not judged.

Yes, he said that—all of it. Why, oh, why does someone so biblically ignorant pontificate repeatedly on Christianity?

For the umpteenth time, God judges both people and actions. While God loves his creation, he hates many things that his fallen creatures believe, desire, and do. We learn that in Scripture. We learn too that Christians are to discern properly and to discriminate—that is, judge—between right and wrong actions. We learn that we are to “judge with righteous judgment,” to “expose the unfruitful works of darkness,” and to “declare the whole counsel of God.” God instructs individuals, church bodies, and civil authorities repeatedly to make judgments regarding right conduct.

We also learn in the Old Testament that God does, indeed, hinder and judge people. And as we learn throughout Scripture, God will judge us all.

The words of Jesus that Lemon attempted to quote, Matthew 7:1, “Judge not, that you be not judged,” are often misunderstood, misused, or abused by those who affirm homoeroticism as good. This admonition from Jesus means several things. What is does not mean is that Christians are prohibited from making distinctions between right and wrong acts. This verse means that,

1.) Fallen humans should not presume to judge the hearts of others,

2.) We are not to presume to know who is saved and who is not, and

3.) We are not to condemn hypocritically a sin in which we ourselves engage. We’re to recognize the universality of sin and offer forgiveness as we have been forgiven.

It’s absurd to claim that the Bible prohibits Christians from making statements about what constitutes moral conduct (i.e., to judge). Neither Lemon nor anyone other than sociopaths believes people should refrain from making moral judgments. Lemon and his ideological allies regularly judge the beliefs, feelings, words, and deeds of others. Has he ever watched CNN?

With pomposity, scorn, and nastiness, leftists regularly judge theologically orthodox Christians. If Christians believe what God’s Word says about sexuality, they are called ignorant, intolerant, hateful bigots—or worse. If “judging people”–in the sense of judging the beliefs, feelings, and acts of people–is wrong, as Lemon says it is, then Lemon and other leftists shouldn’t be judging and condemning Christians as “homophobes” and “transphobes.”

Every civilized human makes judgments every day between right and wrong actions. When Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.—to whom Lemon referred favorably—condemned racism, he was judging. When he said the church was “blemished and scarred” by racism and rendered “weak” and “ineffectual,” he was judging. There is no mistaking that Rev. King heartily endorsed judging. In “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Rev. King wrote,

How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.

Lemon doesn’t really mean Christians shouldn’t make judgments about right and wrong. He really means Christians shouldn’t make any judgments he hates.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Bible-Expert-Don-Lemon-Opines-Again.mp3

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Planned Parenthood has been called out by the National Black Pro-Life Coalition for “systemic racism” and targeting pregnant Black women in a racial discrimination claim filed against the organization.

According to Catherine Davis, president of the Georgia-based Restoration Project, “Systemic racism and abortion intersect at the door of Planned Parenthood, an organization that has targeted Black women and their babies for almost five decades. These intentional actions violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which made it illegal for recipients of federal assistance to discriminate on the basis of race.”

In a claim filed in early October with Office of Civil Rights (OCR), U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, the Coalition contends the discrimination has been taking place for close to half a century. The amount of federal assistance Planned Parenthood’s received over that time is no small sum. In the 2018-2019 fiscal year alone, it received $616.8 million in government revenue per its most recent report. The majority of assistance is said to cover Medicaid reimbursements for contraceptives and preventative services to low income and disadvantaged women.

The Coalition, a network of Pro-Life and Pro-Family organizations that embrace the biblical model, wants the federal government to “investigate and hold Planned Parenthood accountable for their continuing violations of civil rights laws as their services have had a tremendously negative and lasting impact on Black women and children–and overall, the Black family.” Several studies appear to back up the Coalitions claims. A study by the Guttmacher Institute found as many as 37% of abortions are obtained by Black women. In addition, a 2015 study found “nearly 80% of the organization’s surgical abortion facilities are located within walking distance of minority neighborhoods.”

In July, the American Conservative reported, one third of abortions in the U.S. “happen to black babies, despite the fact that black women comprise less than 15% of our population. Indeed, the rate of growth in black communities is slower than among most other major U.S. race and ethnic groups.”

The consequences of this were borne out in a statement released by the Coalition from Walter Hoye, founder of the Issues4Life Foundation. “Abortion has been grown into the leading cause of death for Blacks resulting in a fertility rate (1.8) that is less than the required number (2.1) to replace the population,” Hoye said. “At this rate, by 2050 the total Black fertility rate will be 1.3 or lower, a rate that is irreversible.”

For anyone who doubts Planned Parenthood’s ultimate agenda the Coalition makes it clear. According to its media release, “The 2008 FORM 990, PART III, LINE 1, filed by Planned Parenthood, they described their mission in these terms: to achieve ‘…a U.S. population of stable size in an optimum environment.’” It also noted a tweet from former Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards, proclaiming abortion is as “vital to their mission as birth control or cancer screenings.” The statements are faithful to the organization’s roots.

Planned Parenthood was founded in 1916 in New York by Margaret Sanger who was open about her plans for population control, primarily among those she deemed “unfit.” Now rarely discussed, Sanger’s “Negro Project” was a plan to control the Black birth rate. “To this day, by executing the agenda of their white supremacist founder, Planned Parenthood has developed what I consider to be a method of womb lynching,” said Johnny Hunter, of the Coalition member’s Founder of the Life Education and Resource Network. “That lynching has resulted in the termination of more than twenty million Black lives.”

Stephen Broden of Protect Life and Marriage Texas calls abortion “a brutal form of population control.” He shared, “Abortion has and continues to be a devastating and permanent blow to the Black community. Our children in the womb are decimated. Women are scarred mentally, emotionally and physically–its malicious application disintegrates our families.”

Members of the Coalition appear to view the claim against Planned Parenthood as an extension of the fight for civil rights and social justice. “As my Uncle Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reminded the nation in 1963, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,’” shared Evangelist Alveda C. King, Director of Civil Rights for the Unborn. “It is my prayer that the arc of the universe will now impact HHS, igniting justice for our children in the womb. Now is the time!”

In 2018 (the most recent year reports are available), there were 42,441 abortions committed in the state of Illinois, 15,278 of which were on Black women, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.

To learn more, please visit the National Black Pro-Life Coalition website.

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Written by Walter E. Williams

The Michigan State University administration pressured professor Stephen Hsu to resign from his position as vice president of research and innovation because he touted research that found police are not more likely to shoot black Americans. The study found: “The race of a police officer did not predict the race of the citizen shot. In other words, black officers were just as likely to shoot black citizens as white officers were.” For political reasons, the authors of the study sought its retraction.

The U.S. Department of Education warned UCLA that it may impose fines for improperly and abusively targeting white professor Lt. Col. W. Ajax Peris for disciplinary action over his use of the n-word while reading to his class Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.‘s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” that contained the expressions “when your first name becomes “n——r,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are). Referring to white civil rights activists King wrote, “They have languished in filthy, roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as ‘dirty n——r-lovers.'”

Boston University is considering changing the name of its mascot Rhett because of his link to “Gone with the Wind.” Almost 4,000 Rutgers University students signed a petition to rename campus buildings Hardenbergh Hall, Frelinghuysen Hall and Milledoler Hall because these men were slave owners. University of Arkansas students petitioned to remove a statue of J. William Fulbright because he was a segregationist who opposed the Brown v. Board of Education that ruled against school segregation.

The suppression of free speech and ideas by the elite is nothing new. It has a long ugly history. Galileo Galilei was a 17th-century Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes called “father of modern physics.” The Catholic Church and other scientists of his day believed that the Earth was the center of the universe. Galileo offered evidence that the Earth traveled around the sun — heliocentrism. That made him “vehemently suspect of heresy” and was forced to recant and sentenced to formal imprisonment at the pleasure of the Inquisition and was later commuted to house arrest for the rest of his life.

Much of today’s totalitarianism, promotion of hate and not to mention outright stupidity, has its roots on college campuses. Sources that report on some of the more egregious forms of the abandonment of free inquiry, hate and stupidity at our colleges are: College Reform and College Fix.

Prof. William S. Penn, who was a Distinguished Faculty Award recipient at Michigan State University in 2003, and a two-time winner of the prestigious Stephen Crane Prize for Fiction, explained to his students, “This country still is full of closet racists.” He said: “Republicans are not a majority in this country anymore. They are a bunch of dead white people. Or dying white people.”

The public has recently been treated to the term — white privilege. Colleges have long held courses and seminars on “whiteness.” One college even has a course titled “Abolition of Whiteness.” According to some academic intellectuals, whites enjoy advantages that nonwhites do not. They earn higher income and reside in better housing, and their children go to better schools and achieve more. Based on that idea, Asian Americans have more white privilege than white people. And, on a personal note, my daughter has more white privilege than probably 95% of white Americans.

As George Orwell said, “Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.” If the stupid ideas of academic intellectuals remained on college campuses and did not infect the rest of society, they might be a source of entertainment — much like a circus.

Democrats in California have passed a resolution to tear down a statue of John Wayne and to remove his name from the airport where it stands. The reason they say that they are doing this stems from a 1971 interview Wayne gave in which he was asked about white supremacy. (I believe they dislike John Wayne because he truly loved America.) His answer was unclear. It seemed to me he was trying to say if differing groups want to be supreme, they need to act that way. It was not a good answer, but it was just words.

No one condemning Wayne has seemed to notice that his actions betray what he may, or may not, have meant to say 50 years ago. John Wayne had three wives during his life. All three were of Mexican descent. His family adamantly insists that he never mistreated anyone due to race. The Duke wasn’t much of a white supremacist in his daily life, but having said the right politically correct words is all that matters today. . . Just ask Mike Pence.

Over the weekend the Vice President stood strong in refusing to repeat the slogan “Black Lives Matter” during an appearance on CBS’ Face the Nation.  When pressed to say what the left wants, instead Pence said:

“All my life, I’ve been inspired by the example of the reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. . .  I cherish the progress that we have made towards a more perfect union for African-Americans throughout our history. . .  And as a pro-life American, I also believe that all life matters, born and unborn.  

“But what I see in the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement is a political agenda of the radical left that would defund the police, that would tear down monuments, that would press a radical left agenda. . .

“I really believe that all lives matter, and that’s where the heart of the American people lies.”

I would caution people not to post the Black Lives Matter slogan. Everyone knows and supports the words, but not the connotations it carries. It is the same reason why I would not encourage people to say, “every child a wanted child.” Should all children be loved and wanted?  Yes, of course! But that is a slogan of the abortion industry which has worked to kill millions of babies under the banner of that compassionate sounding slogan.

While black lives certainly matter, the organization supports the disproportionate killing of black unborn babies, the destruction of the traditional family, and the radical LGBT agenda, and it holds racist views toward Jews and Israel.

Regarding what to say, a recent Rasmussen Poll found that by a two-to-one margin Americans support the phrase “All lives matter” more than “Black Lives Matter.” Even among black voters, 47 percent prefer “All Lives Matter” compared to 44 percent who prefer “Black Lives Matter.”

Read more: Exposing Black Lives Matter

This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.

Written by Dr. Everett Piper

In April 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his letter from the Birmingham Jail. In it, he argued that “there are two types of laws: just and unjust,” King went on: “A just law is a … code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with that moral law.”

King then said, “Any law that uplifts [the human being] is just. Any law that degrades human [beings] is unjust. All segregation is unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the [human being].

“Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber,” contended King, “substitutes an ‘it’ for a ‘thou’ … and ends up relegating persons to the status of things [such as a color or a race].

“Segregation is morally wrong and sinful. Sin is separation … and segregation is an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness.”

In other words, what King was clearly saying was this: When you divide what should be united, you are not an integrationist. You are a segregationist. And you are guilty of sin.

Voddie Baucham, dean of Theology at the African Christian University in Lusaka, Zambia, says it this way,

“The concept of race is not a biblical idea; it is a constructed idea. You won’t find the idea of races in the Bible. [In Scripture], we are all the race of Adam. One race, one blood … The separations we have created — the racial categories — are artificial … They are not real … Racial distinctions are things that we have made up to divide ourselves … But the all-sufficient Word of God says to us, ‘That’s a lie, stop believing it!’”

The take-home from both King and Mr. Baucham is this. We are made in the image of God. He designed us and defined us, and when we compromise His description of who we are — when we hyphenate our identity through our contrived definitions and divisions — we not only compromise the dignity of man but also denigrate the very definition of God.

St. Paul says,

“There is ONE body … and ONE God. For in Christ … there is neither Jew nor Greek … You are all ONE [emphasis mine] in Christ Jesus.”

In Genesis 1:27, we are told that “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him …” Moses is very clear. God did not say he created humanity and then divided us by categories. All men and women are created as a singular race that is a direct reflection of the unity of triune God himself. There is absolutely nothing here that suggests otherwise.

In the “moral law of God,” there is no black and white. There is no such thing as a hyphenated human being. There is no such division. The only definition of man that we have in the Bible is that God created us as a unified “thou,” not a bunch of divided “its.”

Any segregation of this image — of the Imago Dei — into separate categories based on the “color of one’s skin rather than the content of one’s character” is “an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness.”

The enemy of human dignity and human freedom knows this. He knows that all that’s necessary to conquer us is to divide us from each other and divide us from God.

Our nation’s seal says E Pluribus Unum and not E Unum Pluribus for a reason.

It is out of many, one! Not out of one, many!

United, we stand. Divided, we fall.

The consequence of abandoning this truth is always anarchy, not freedom. Lies always result in more and more bondage and less and less liberty.

Remember this in November.

Never vote for anyone shouting diversity rather than unity.

Never vote for anyone marching for “us” vs. “them.”

Never vote for anyone who focuses on black vs. white; the 99 percent vs. the one; the proletariat vs. the bourgeoisie.

Never vote for anyone who implies that some “lives matter” and others don’t.

Never vote for anyone who is “out of harmony with the moral law of God.”

Never vote for dividing and segregating the Imago Dei.

Never vote for anyone who waves the banner of the “it” vs. the “thou.”

Such people care little for those they claim to defend. They only care about power.

Such people know that if they can divide us, they can control us by manipulating our anger, resentment and our desire for revenge.

Martin Luther King Jr. knew this. He understood not only the lessons of Scripture but also those of history. He knew that a message of division and retaliation rather than one of unity and repentance always brings the “guillotine” and blood flowing in the streets.

Dr. Everett Piper, former president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, is a columnist for The Washington Times and author of “Not A Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery 2017).

This article was originally published at The Washington Times.

New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, a committed Christian, and, before last week, deeply admired and liked by people of all colors and no color, committed an almost unforgivable sin. He said this in response to a specific question about athletes kneeling during the national anthem:

I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country. Let me just tell you what I see or what I feel when the national anthem is played, and when I look at the flag of the United States. I envision my two grandfathers, who fought for this country during World War II, one in the Army and one in the Marine Corp, both risking their lives to protect our country and to try to make our country and this world a better place. Every time I stand with my hand over my heart, looking at that flag, and singing the national anthem, that’s what I think about, and in many cases, it brings me to tears thinking about all that has been sacrificed, not just [by] those in the military, but … those throughout the civil rights movements of the ’60s, and everyone, and all that has been endured by so many people up until this point. And is everything right with our country right now? No, it’s not. We still have a long way to go, but I think what you do by standing there and showing respect to the flag with your hand over your heart, is it shows unity. It shows that we are all in this together, we can all do better and that we are all part of the solution.” (emphasis added)

“Progressives” became apoplectic and splenetic. Judging from their attacks, one would think Brees had publicly celebrated Derek Chauvin.

Under withering attacks, Brees offered two apologies because the mob hated his first one. Then his wife, Brittany Brees, issued an apology in which she said,

Somehow we as white America … can feel good about not being racist, feel good about loving one another as God loves us. We can feel good about educating our children about the horrors of slavery and history. We can read books to our children about Martin Luther King, Malcolm X., Hank Aaron, Barack Obama, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman.. and feel like we are doing our part to raise our children to love, be unbiased and with no prejudice. To teach them about all of the African Americans that have fought for and risked their lives against racial injustice. Somehow as white Americans we feel like that checks the box of doing the right thing. Not until this week did Drew and I realize THAT THIS IS THE PROBLEM. To say “I don’t agree with disrespecting the flag” .. I now understand was also saying I don’t understand what the problem really is, I don’t understand what you’re fighting for, and I’m not willing to hear you because of our preconceived notions of what that flag means to us. That’s the problem we are not listening, white America is not hearing. We’re not actively LOOKING for racial prejudice.

If saying “I don’t agree with disrespecting the flag” also says “I don’t understand what the problem really is,” then does kneeling during the national anthem mean both “America is systemically racist” and “I don’t understand why you value the flag and national anthem. I don’t understand what you see that’s good in America. I’m not willing to hear you because of our view of America as pervasively evil and whites as oppressors”?

Unlike Brittany Brees, I can’t speak for all of white America. I don’t know what all of white America feels. But I do know that for a lot of white Americans, teaching our children about the horrors of slavery and lynchings, about Jim Crow laws, and about Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Hank Aaron, Jesse Owens, and the Tuskegee Airmen is not about “feeling good.” Raising our children to love others, to hate bigotry, and to stand up for mistreated friends is not about “feeling good” or “checking boxes.” It’s not about virtue-signaling or pride. It’s about serving Christ. It’s about loving our neighbors as ourselves. It’s about truth.

“Progressives” argue that people who explicitly condemn police brutality and all forms of bigotry and who have never said or done anything racist are the problem if they don’t endorse kneeling during the national anthem. Just curious, does that principle of collective guilt apply to all egregious sin? Are people who explicitly oppose the sexual exploitation of women and children in pornography, strip clubs, prostitution, and sex trafficking, and who have never viewed porn, visited a strip club, hired a prostitute, or trafficked women and children a problem? Should they kneel during the national anthem as a protest against the many Americans who watch porn, leer at women in strip clubs, hire prostitutes, and/or traffic in women and children? Are our flag and national anthem now symbols of the poisonous systemic abuse of women and children that colleges and universities promote through courses that celebrate porn? Are Americans who explicitly oppose the sexual exploitation of women and children, who are pro-actively teaching their children about its evil, and who have never been complicit in it via using porn, visiting strip clubs, hiring prostitutes, or sex-trafficking, the problem if they are not “actively” looking for the sexual exploitation of women and children?

Former NFL player Shannon Sharpe said this about Drew Brees’s response to an interviewer’s question about the knee-taking of athletes:

[Drew] issued an apology … but it’s meaningless because the guys know he spoke his heart the very first time around. I don’t know what Drew’s going to do, but he probably should just go ahead and retire now. He will never be the same. Take it from a guy that has been a leader in the locker room for a number of years. What he said, they will never look at him the same because he spoke his heart. It wasn’t what he said, it was how he said it. He was defiant. I will NEVER [yes, Sharpe shouted that defiantly] respect the man.

BTW, Brees did not speak defiantly as Sharpe falsely claimed—making Sharpe, therefore, a slanderer. Don’t believe me? Well, watch it yourself and see if you think Brees was “defiant”:

Sharpe expresses the “progressive” view of “tolerance,” and this is why “progressivism” will destroy both freedom and the country. Brees saying that he disagrees with knee-taking during the national anthem while at the same time saying the flag represents the sacrifices made during the Civil Rights era and acknowledging that right now we have a lot of work yet to do renders him—in Sharpe’s repugnant view—unsuitable for employment or respect.

Brees’s teammate Malcolm Jenkins castigated him too saying,

Drew Brees, if you don’t understand how hurtful, how insensitive your comments are, you are part of the problem. To think that because your grandfathers served in this country and you have a great respect for the flag that everybody else should have the same ideals and thoughts that you do is ridiculous. And it shows that you don’t know history. Because when our grandfathers fought for this country and served and they came back, they didn’t come back to a hero’s welcome. They came back and got attacked for wearing their uniforms. They came back to people, to racism, to complete violence.”

Brees never said anything like “everybody else should have the same ideals and thoughts” that he does. Moreover, Brees is justified in valuing the service of his grandfathers, and he is justified in his respect and love for America—the country to which emigrants the world over seek entry. He’s justified in loving America for her founding—though imperfectly realized—principles. He’s justified in celebrating the incredible integration of peoples of diverse races, ethnicities, and religions in America. He’s justified in appreciating how far we’ve come since slavery and Jim Crow laws.

It is possible for whites both to value the sacrifice and service of their fathers and grandfathers and to feel contempt for the injustice of black fathers and grandfathers being ill-treated following their service and sacrifice.

Vietnam war veterans—both black and white—were spit on by liberals when they returned home. Do we hold liberals who, not only didn’t engage in such behavior but also condemn it, accountable for that injustice? Do we blame such ugly behavior committed by some liberals fifty years ago on all of America? Does the American flag and national anthem symbolize their repugnant acts?

Jenkins continued,

And then here we are in 2020, with the whole country on fire, everybody witnessing a black man dying—being murdered—at the hands of the police, just in cold blood for everybody to see. The whole country’s on fire, and the first thing that you do is criticize one’s peaceful protest that was years ago when we were trying to signal a sign for help and signal for our allies and our white brothers and sisters, the people we consider to be friends, to get involved? It was ignored. And here we are now with the world on fire and you still continue to first criticize how we peacefully protest because it doesn’t fit in what you do and your beliefs without ever acknowledging that the fact that a man was murdered at the hands of police in front of us all and that it’s been continuing for centuries, that the same brothers that you break the huddle down with before every single game, the same guys that you bleed with and go into battle with every single day go home to communities that have been decimated.

Brees didn’t “continue to first criticize.” He has not been continually criticizing the kneeling protests. He didn’t initiate discussion of the topic. Brees was asked by an interviewer what he would do if teammates kneeled during the national anthem.

And while Brees didn’t mention George Floyd, he did acknowledge the suffering of the black community. To remind Jenkins, this is what Brees said:

[I]t brings me to tears, thinking about all that has been sacrificed, not just [by] those in the military, but … [by] those throughout the civil rights movements of the ’60s, and everyone, and all that has been endured by so many people up until this point. And is everything right with our country right now? No, it’s not. We still have a long way to go. … we can all do better and … we are all part of the solution.

What exactly did Jenkins mean when he said the kneeling protests were “ignored”? Likely he meant that there were many people who didn’t participate or support the protest. In other words, in Jenkins’ view, the only acceptable way to help decimated black communities is to protest the national anthem. But then isn’t Jenkins doing exactly what he accuses Brees of doing? Isn’t he demanding that everyone believe what he believes about the protests, the flag, and the national anthem?

Jenkins is ignoring that there are white people and black people trying to help decimated black communities. They’ve been trying for years, but they’re shouted down and called bigots for having different views than white and black liberals on how to solve the problems of racism and urban blight. Here are some of their ideas:

• How should we address actual racism committed by racist individuals in police departments—most of which are controlled by liberals? Punish them and/or get rid of them. How do we do that? Revisit/reform “qualified immunity” and policies that conceal police misconduct and protect brutal cops.

• How should we address crime in black communities? Work on transforming society by getting rid of no-fault divorce and using every resource available to promote true marriage and discourage out-of-wedlock pregnancies. Intact families with a mother and a father are the greatest protections against poverty and crime. And when crime is reduced in communities, businesses will move in.

• How do we improve education? Offer impoverished families school choice and end teachers’ unions that promote destructive policies and protect lousy teachers. And stop teaching divisive and false ideas from organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center’s education arm Teaching Tolerance, or Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, or The 1619 Project that present imbalanced views of American history and teach children of color that because of white oppression, they have no hope of moving up in the world.

• How do we help blacks improve their financial position? Deregulate businesses and reduce taxes in order to grow the economy, thereby providing jobs.

• How do we help eradicate bigotry, bitterness, and hatred? We preach the gospel—the whole gospel.

If Jenkins is concerned about the decimation in his community, why attack Brees? Why not attack “progressives” who have run the cities in which those decimated communities subsist? Why not attack the racism profiteers like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson who make bank by fomenting racial division? Why not attack liberal leaders who deny school choice to poor black families? Why not attack teachers’ unions that protect lousy teachers in failing schools? Why not attack fatherlessness that results in criminality? Why not attack Black Lives Matter (BLM) that seeks to dismantle families, which are the single best hope for black children?

Here are just some of BLM’s principles and goals:

We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.

We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking.

Note that mothers and parents are mentioned but not fathers.

Are those principles and goals helpful to black children? Are they unifying? Are they good?

Jenkins was not done with his accusatory screed:

Drew, unfortunately, you’re somebody who doesn’t understand their privilege. You don’t understand the potential that you have to actually be an advocate for the people that you call brothers.

Will Jenkins stand behind whites who advocate for school choice, true marriage, and the end of teachers’ unions? Will Jenkins cheer whites who advocate against premarital sex and out-of-wedlock births? Will Jenkins cheer whites who advocate for the end of divisive, destructive diversity training and The 1619 Project that teach lies and foster division? Will Jenkins cheer for whites who advocate the ideas of Candace Owens, Thomas Sowell, Ben Carson, Bob Woodson and “1776 Unites” project? Or are whites expected to advocate for only ideas and policies that Jenkins, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Nikole Hannah-Jones and her 1619 Project scam promulgate?

Liberals have had fifty years to solve the problems endemic to urban communities of color—including eight years with a black president whose presidency saw black unemployment and racial division surge. Is Jenkins willing to listen to the ideas of others on how to help, how to advocate, how to get involved? Is he willing to listen to diverse ideas on how to rebuild suffering communities? Or will he say to black conservatives what he said to Brees: “you should shut the f–k up.”

It’s ironic that progressives have controlled most major cities for decades and have been forcing Americans in government schools and the corporate world to endure years of “diversity training,” “sensitivity” sessions, and “social justice” indoctrination, and yet we just suffered through the worst race riots since 1968 when Boomers and their rotten ideas began corrupting academia.

Their rotten ideas have—as expected and predicted—produced rotten fruit that is poisoning the hearts and minds of Americans. Race relations had been improving slowly but surely until the Boomers’ ideas seeped from sullied towers in bastions of idiocy like Berkeley to countless colleges and universities and then into high schools. Peggy McIntosh, White Privilege Conferences, and Howard Zinn’s revisionist history of the United States turned young teens’ minds into burbling cauldrons of contempt for America and its founding principles—those very principles that had brought us so far from the days of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and red-lining. With an erroneous understanding of American history, young Americans falsely believe that America was and remains a wholly evil country that must be destroyed and rebuilt in the recriminatory image of “progressives.”

Former NFL coach and Christian Tony Dungy, who likes and respects Drew Brees, expressed disappointment with his initial comments. Dungy said that “we need unifying voices, not divisive voices.” Dungy’s comments were disappointing in that he didn’t address the divisiveness of Black Lives Matter, Antifa, The 1619 Project, Critical Race Theory, or people like Al Sharpton. He didn’t address the divisiveness of the attacks on Drew Brees for saying—when asked—that he doesn’t agree with kneeling during the national anthem. But you see, Dungy wasn’t asked about any of that, just like Brees was not asked specifically about George Floyd.

Two apologies from Drew Brees and one long one from Mrs. Brees, all of which suggest they have joined BLM. These apologies bring to mind Winston Smith at the end of 1984. Sadly, it doesn’t take torture to get grown men (and women) to capitulate to a destructive ideology. All it takes today is a barrage of insults.

Every day, we see across America signs of hope and progress. We see interracial couples, multi-racial churches, multi-racial groups of friends, and upwardly mobile black families. Is America perfect? Of course not. No society can ever be perfect because humans are fallen creatures. Fallen creatures hate. People of all colors hate. But our founding principles are good, and they are guiding us toward better.

Over a dozen years ago, while working at Deerfield High School in Deerfield, Illinois, I was helping a high school junior on her paper for American Studies (still co-taught by the same two teachers today). She cheerily told me that by the end of first semester in American Studies, she hated America and hated being an American. “Social justice” mission accomplished.

Listen to this article read by Laurie: 

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In his recent Christianity Today (CT) blog post, New Testament scholar Scot McKnight defends recently retired CT president Mark Galli’s hubristic diktat about the necessity—in Galli’s view—of Trump’s removal from office:

Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Senate or by popular vote next election—that is a matter of prudential judgment. That he should be removed, we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.

Trump’s removal from office would inarguably result in the election of a man or woman who endorses, among other things, human slaughter, the intentional creation of motherless and fatherless children for homosexuals, the chemical sterilization of gender-dysphoric minors, the sexual integration of private spaces, a diminution of religious liberty, and mandatory transpeak (i.e., the mis-sexing of cross-sex impersonators)—facts that cannot be ignored in this discussion.

In his blog post, McKnight tries unsuccessfully to recast Galli’s argument via the creation of a colossal strawman painted with an equally colossal brush. He argues that both support for and opposition to Galli’s argument—which in McKnight’s view was solely a moral judgment wholly devoid of political dimensions—reveals a philosophical commitment to “statism”:

At no time in my life have I seen the church more engaged in politics and more absorbed by a political story. … [M]ake no mistake, the American story is increasingly statism. … [S]tatism entails an inherent belief, either explicit or implicit, in the state. It is a belief that solutions to our biggest problems are found in the state and the Christian’s responsibility from the Left or the Right is to get involved and acquire political power. Statism as I am using it here is the idol of making a human the world’s true ruler. Statism exalts humans and human plans and voting. Statism centers its faith in the future on who rules in D.C. Statism makes government a god. … Those who think the CT editorial meant support for the other party are statists. Those who think it meant support for their party are statists. Neither was the case. It was a moral judgment.

McKnight’s strawman is constructed out of a dollop of redefinition, a smidge of ambiguity, and a dearth of nuance. Take special note of McKnight’s critical admission: “Statism as I am using it here” (emphasis added).

The church has always been deeply involved in political issues that are at their core, biblical. That’s why the church was involved in the abolitionist movement and the Civil Rights Movement, both of which created hostility and division within the country.

Statism is typically defined as “centralized government administration and control of social and economic affairs.” As such, deep concern by conservative Christians about the expansion of government, its encroachment into spheres of life where it doesn’t belong, and its promotion of evil as good is not tantamount to “statism.” In fact, such concerns and efforts to participate in the project of self-government to remedy these offenses against truth and liberty are the antithesis of “statism.” The desire to reduce the size and scope of government, to protect human life, and to strengthen support for the First Amendment so as to allow individuals, families, and churches to flourish cannot rationally be conceived of as “statism.”

While the belief that Galli’s editorial “meant support for the other party” may have been wrong, such a belief is not proof of statism. Moreover, while Trump’s removal from office may or may not signify support for the other party, it certainly means the other party will have even more opportunity to harm individuals, the family, and the church.

McKnight implies that Christians believe solutions to all our biggest problems are found in the state, whereas many Christians have more reasonable beliefs. They believe that elected leaders can pass policies and laws, make judicial appointments, and issue executive orders that embody and reflect either good or evil, truth or falsehood, wisdom or foolishness, and that either contribute to or undermine human flourishing.

They value religious liberty and speech rights. They seek justice for humans in the womb. And they are deeply thankful for the blessing of self-government that the oppressed from all around the world come to America to enjoy. And yes, they feel passionate about these issues, which, while political, are first and foremost, biblical, which makes their moral judgments sound.

But apparently McKnight sees the passionate desire of Christians to elect leaders who will protect humans in the womb, women in the locker room, and religious liberty as an idolatrous quest for power and proof of statist drives. Did he feel that way about William Wilberforce’s tireless efforts to end the slave trade in England or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s divisive efforts to end the egregious violations of the civil rights of African Americans?

Paul teaches that “there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” So, who is the authority God has instituted here in America? We, the people, are. Christians who feel passionately about the importance of exercising the blessing of self-government through voting and who believe a flawed man who has implemented policy decisions wiser than the ones his opponents would implement are not making an idol of him or exalting human plans. They are properly exercising their authority instituted by God.

Mcknight also believes that “progressive” Christian Randall Balmer was right when he asserted that

Christianity operates best from the margins of power, not in its center. Too many today think the solutions to our problems are anchored to the one leading the White House.

I’m not sure who Balmer and McKnight hang out with because no Christian I know believes that “the solutions to our problems are anchored to the one leading the White House”—at least not all the solutions to all our problems.

Many Christians believe, however, that some of the solutions to some of our problems can be remedied by elected government leaders, including, of course, the president. Do Balmer and McKnight believe no solution to any problem can be found in the decisions of our president?

While many Christians supported candidates other than Trump during the primary, when the General Election arrived, the choices were between two morally flawed candidates—one of whom offered some glimmer of hope for decisions that would contribute to human flourishing. That candidate—Donald Trump—has made judicial appointments, issued executive orders, and implemented policy decisions that have surprised many conservatives—decisions for which they are thankful.

Appreciation for these good decisions no more constitutes “wholesale evangelical support” for Trump than presumably CT’s support for the work of Karl Barth constitutes wholesale support for this deeply sinful man.

In a 2017 article about Thomas Jefferson’s affair with his slave and theologian Karl Barth’s decades long affair with his assistant, whom he brought to live in his home despite the pain it caused his wife, Mark Galli wrote,

In light of these profound contradictions, what are we to do with the messages of each of these men? Does their behavior tarnish their ideas? … I don’t think so. … Like many, I’ve long hoped to find a heroic human figure whom I can admire unflinchingly. But time and again, I’ve had to discover there is no such person. Well, except the one known as the True Man, who dialectically enough has been known to use ignoble things to shine forth his glory.

Are Donald Trump’s achievements commensurate with those of Thomas Jefferson or Karl Barth? No, but that’s irrelevant to the arguments of Galli, and presumably Dalrymple and McKnight. Their arguments concern whether it is moral for Christians to vote for a morally flawed candidate with better policies than his opponent, and whether admiration for the good policies he has effected constitutes idolatry.

Balmer wants Christians to be marginalized except when he doesn’t. Balmer waxes enthusiastic about times when Christians “set the social and political agenda” for the country:

For years, I have argued in books, articles, op-eds and even a couple of documentaries that evangelicalism, in contrast to the Religious Right, has a long and distinguished history. Evangelicals set the social and political agenda for much of the 19th century. They advocated for the poor and the rights of workers to organize. They supported prison reform and public education. They enlisted in peace crusades and supported women’s equality, including voting rights.

Apparently, Balmer wants Christians on the margins of power only when he disagrees with their social and political agenda.

Still reeling from the 2016 election, Randall Balmer confesses,

I should be over it by now, but I confess that the number 81 continues to haunt me. Following the shock of Election Day 2016, the further news that 81% of white evangelicals supported Donald Trump was devastating to me personally. These were the same people who had been telling us for the past four decades that they were devoted to “family values,” but then they pivoted and, without hint of irony or apology, cast their votes for a twice-divorced, self-confessed sexual predator. … I was, well, devastated.

Here’s what Dr. King, a profligate philanderer—whom CT, with no hint of irony or apology, celebrates—said about Christians and political power:

I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between … the sacred and the secular.

…

There was a time when the church was very powerful–in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. …  Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.” But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent–and often even vocal–sanction of things as they are.

It’s a good thing the early Christians Dr. King described didn’t allow the “reputation” of the church to determine their actions.

McKnight, perhaps accurately, prophesies what Christianity “Tomorrow” will look like:

Evangelicalism … is shifting. … Christianity will be a justice-oriented evangelicalism.

Unlike many evangelicals, McKnight finds such a shift to be a good thing, citing favorably new CT president Timothy Dalrymple’s vision for both CT and evangelicalism:

Out of love for Jesus and his church, not for political partisanship or intellectual elitism, this is why we feel compelled to say that the alliance of American evangelicalism with this presidency has wrought enormous damage to Christian witness. It has alienated many of our children and grandchildren. It has harmed African American, Hispanic American, and Asian American brothers and sisters. And it has undercut the efforts of countless missionaries who labor in the far fields of the Lord. While the Trump administration may be well regarded in some countries, in many more the perception of wholesale evangelical support for the administration has made toxic the reputation of the Bride of Christ.

…

[Trump] is a symptom of a sickness that began before him, which is the hyper-politicization of the American church. This is a danger for all of us, wherever we fall on the political spectrum. Jesus said we should give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. With profound love and respect, we ask our brothers and sisters in Christ to consider whether they have given to Caesar what belongs only to God: their unconditional loyalty.

Some thoughts on Dalrymple’s thoughts:

• It’s out of love for Jesus and his church, not for political partisanship, that many Christians feel compelled to support President Trump. It’s out of their deep desire to protect those who are knitted together in their mothers’ wombs that many in the 81% that give Randall Balmer the heebie-jeebies feel compelled to support this presidency. It is out of love for God who created man male and female that Christians support Trump. Are those idolatrous statist desires?

• Has Trump’s presidency harmed African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian American brothers and sisters? How so? What’s Dalrymple’s evidence?

• For McKnight to cite Dalrymple’s concern for the “reputation of the Bride of Christ” is ironic because McKnight doesn’t view marriage —the earthly picture of Christ, the Bridegroom, and his church, the Bride of Christ—as an essential Christian creed:

The issue is that essentials of the faith and theological robustness speak to the Christian creeds and not to anything about marriage.  

In contrast, Professor Anthony Esolen, writing in Touchstone Magazine, says this about marriage:

The marriage of man and woman is an image of Christ’s union with his bride the Church (Eph.5:32, Rev. 21:20), and that is meant as no mere poetry. The madness of our time would reduce the Bible’s most exalted revelation of the nature of the divine image in man and of the union of God with man to a figure of speech.

Of course, it’s possible to believe the historical understanding of marriage is non-essential and still be concerned about the reputation of the bride of Christ in the world, but Dalrymple’s assertion and McKnight’s admiration for it raises the question, does the world hate evangelicals more for their support—often grudging—of President Trump or for their support for marriage as intrinsically and unalterably the union of one man—the earthly representation of Christ—and one woman—the earthly representation of the church? (If marriage is the picture of Christ and the church, what does same-sex “marriage” mean other than that there is no distinction in nature or function between Christ and the church? And how would that implicit claim be non-essential?)

• Since the alienation of children and grandchildren is offered as justification for abandonment of Trump in favor of morally flawed candidates who endorse evil policies, what do McKnight, Dalrymple, and Galli make of Jesus’ words from Matthew 10:

Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. … Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. ³⁶ And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.

Now that’s some serious familial alienation Jesus has promised us.

Will McKnight, Dalrymple, and CT reject the non-essential understanding of marriage if it makes “toxic” the reputation of evangelicals in the world? Will they reject the non-essential biblically based understanding of marriage if it alienates many of our children and grandchildren?

• Voting for Trump does not demonstrate idolatrous worship of (or “unconditional loyalty” to) him anymore than voting for any of the candidates who heartily endorse human slaughter and soul-destroying sexual immorality would demonstrate “unconditional loyalty” to them.

How would the world respond if evangelicals supported someone as morally degenerate as Pete Buttigieg, whose degeneracy—one could argue—far surpasses Trump’s? The world would rejoice. By currying favor with the world, the church’s “reputation” would shine because the church would now be in the world and of the world. But that shine would not be from the true light of the True Man.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

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IFI is hosting our annual Worldview Conference on March 7th at the Village Church of Barrington. This year’s conference is titled “Thinking Biblically About Our Corrosive Culture” and features Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. Rob Gagnon. For more information, please click HERE for a flyer or click the button below to register for the conference.

I’d like to offer a few words about the separation of church and state—a concept long abused by “progressives.”

The religion clauses of the First Amendment were intended to protect religion from the intrusive power of the state, not the reverse. The Establishment Clause states that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.” That does not mean religious convictions are prohibited from informing political values and decisions. To expect or demand that political decisions be divorced from personal religious beliefs is an untenable, unconscionable breach of the intent of the First Amendment which also includes the oft-neglected Free Exercise Clause which states that “Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion.”

People from diverse faith traditions and no faith could all arrive at the same position on a particular public policy. For example, although Orthodox Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Baptists, and atheists may all oppose abortion because they value human life, the reasons (or motives) for that valuation of life differ.

If there is a secular purpose for a law (i.e., to protect incipient human life), then voting for it—even for religious reasons—does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The source or motives of the various parties’ desires to protect incipient life are not the concern of the government. It would be not only absurd but also unethical for the government to try to ascertain the motives or beliefs behind anyone’s opposition to abortion and equally unethical for the government to assert that only those who have no religious faith may vote on abortion laws. Such an assertion would most assuredly violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

Legal theorist Michael Perry explains that,

forcing religious arguments to be restated in other terms asks a citizen to ‘bracket’ religious convictions from the rest of her personality, essentially demanding that she split off a part of her self . . . [T]o bracket [religious convictions] would be to bracket—indeed, to annihilate—herself. And doing that would preclude her—the particular person she is—from engaging in moral discourse with other members of society.

To paraphrase First Things founder, Richard John Neuhaus, that which is political is moral and that which is moral, for religious people, is religious. It is no less legitimate to have political decisions shaped by religion than by psychology, philosophy, or self-serving personal desire.

If allowing religious beliefs to shape political decisions did represent a violation of the Establishment Clause and an inappropriate commingling of religion and government, then American history is rife with egregiously unconstitutional actions, for religious convictions have impelled some of our most significant social, political, and legal changes including the abolition of slavery, antiwar movements, opposition to capital punishment, and the passage of civil rights legislation.

“Progressives” seem to have no objection to people of faith participating in the democratic process so long as their views comport with “progressive” positions. “Progressives” never cry foul when Quakers or Catholics oppose war because of their religious convictions, and “progressives” do not object that Catholic opposition to the death penalty represents a violation of the separation of church and state. When conservative people of faith participate in the political process, however, suddenly the Establishment Clause has been violated.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is replete with references to his Christian faith which informed his belief about the inherent dignity, value, and rights of African Americans, a belief which he lost his life to see enshrined in law. He wrote what would now certainly generate howls of opposition if expressed by a conservative:

How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.

The same people who argue vociferously against the presence of religiously informed political decisions that are conservative in nature are curiously silent with regard to those Catholics, Jews, United Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Unitarians, and Episcopalians who were politically active in the movement to effect speech codes or revolutionize marital laws. One could argue that those who attend houses of worship that support legalized same-sex unions are similarly attempting to enshrine in law their religious beliefs.

When politicians like presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, former president Barack Obama, and Senator Rob Portman or celebrities like Jason Collins cite their Christian beliefs as the justification for their support for the redefinition of marriage, or fiscal policies, no one in the press or homosexual community accuses them of violating the separation of church and state.

Neuhaus argues persuasively in his book The Naked Public Square that a polity denuded of religion will be clothed soon enough in some other system that functions as religion by providing “normative ethics.” A democratic republic cannot exist without objective normative ethics that render legitimate the delimitation or circumscription of individual rights.

Historically, the sources of the absolute, transcendent, objective, universal truths that render legitimate our legal and judicial systems have been “the institutions of religion that make claims of ultimate or transcendent meaning.” Neuhaus explains that this “does not represent an imposition of the private into the public spheres, but rather an expansion or transformation or recollection of what is public.” He argues that when religion is utterly privatized and eliminated as a “source or transcendence that gives legitimate and juridical direction and form, something else will necessarily fill the void, and that force will be the state.”

If the body politic claims that there are no absolutes or delegitimizes religion as an arbiter of right and wrong, or good and evil, then the state will fill the vacuum, relativizing all values, and rendering this relativization absolute. Many would argue that there is little indication that society has heeded Neuhaus’ warning about the political implications of society’s rejection of religiously derived transcendent truths. And so, the coercive power of the state increasingly fills the space vacated by religious institutions.

Lawmaking absent an understanding that there exist moral truths that are objective and universal would represent an illegitimate and hubristic arrogation of power by the state. Acknowledging that there is objective truth regarding what is right and wrong and that it is universal and knowable is essential to democratic institutions. What sense does outrage at human rights violations make if we assert there are no universal, transcendent, eternal, objective truths? And if we agree that these truths exist and that they transcend the subjective opinions of any particular individual, then what is their source other than a supernatural, eternal, transcendent being?

Some argue that reason alone is sufficient to serve as the objective source of truth, but a recollection of Hitler’s eugenic reasoning reveals the problem with reliance solely on man’s reason. Claims of unalienable, self-evident rights, as our founding fathers understood them, both presume and require for justification, the existence of God. Robert L. Toms wrote that it was this understanding that generated “the concept that the state, the monarch, the dictator, the tribal leader, was no longer a deity to be obeyed unquestionably.” And the state neither creates ex nihilo nor confers our fundamental rights but, rather, provides legal protection for extant rights.

Charges of violating the separation of church and state are selectively hurled. Remember that next time a lefty tells you your political views must be severed from your religious views.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/cCHristians_church-and-state_audio.mp3

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There are some battles in which all Christians and all who are committed to truth are called to engage: all Christians should have opposed slavery; all Christians should have fought for the civil rights of blacks; all Christians are called to oppose abortion; and we are all called to oppose the rancorous, pernicious demands to affirm the pro-homosexuality/pro-“trans” ideologies.

In his book Kingdoms in Conflict, Chuck Colson writes about the failure of the church to oppose the extermination of Jews and the government usurpation of control of the church in Nazi Germany. Immediately following the naming of Hitler as Chancellor of Germany, the persecution of the church began in earnest. In response, a resistance movement sprang up headed by Martin Niemoller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Initially, they had the support of the dominant Protestant group, the German Evangelical Church, but as the persecution increased, so did the cowardice and concomitant rationalization of cowardice on the parts of most church leaders. In Germany only a remnant, who came to call themselves the Confessing Church, remained standing courageously in the gap for truth.

The German Evangelical Church acted in ways virtually all Christians now view as ignoble, selfish, and cowardly:

• Pastors resigned from the resistance out of fear that they might lose their positions in the church.

• Frightened by the boldness of the resistance movement, church leaders issued public statements of support for Hitler and the Third Reich.

• Some pastors believed that a “‘more reasonable tone would be more honoring to those with different views.'” One bishop told Martin Niemoller that those pastors who refused to join the resistance were “‘trying to bring peace to the church'” rather than “‘seem like… troublemakers.'” In response, Niemoller asked “‘What does it matter how we look in Germany compared with how we look in Heaven?'” The bishop responded, “‘We cannot pronounce judgment on all the ills of society. Most especially we ought not single out the one issue that the government is so sensitive about.'”

• In a conversation with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one young pastor justified capitulation like this: “‘[T]here are no pastorates for those of us who will not cooperate. What is the good in preaching if you have no congregation? Where will this noncooperation lead us? We are no longer a recognized body; we have no government assistance; we cannot care for the souls in the armed forces or give religion lessons in schools. What will become of the church if that continues? A heap of rubble!'”

What is alarming about the account of the German Evangelical Church’s reprehensible failure is its similarity to the ongoing disheartening story of the contemporary American church’s failure to respond appropriately to the spread of radical, heretical, destructive views of homosexuality and biological sex. Don’t we today see church leaders self-censoring out of fear of losing their positions or their church members? Don’t we hear churches criticizing those who boldly confront the efforts of homosexual and “trans” activists to propagandize children and undermine the church’s teaching on sexuality? Aren’t the calls of the capitulating German Christians for “a more reasonable tone” and a commitment to “honor different views” exactly like the calls of today’s church to be tolerant and honor “diversity”? Don’t pastors justify their silence by claiming they fear losing their tax-exempt status (i.e., government assistance)? Don’t they rationalize inaction by claiming that speaking out will prevent them from saving souls?

What is even more reprehensible in America, however, is that church leaders don’t currently face loss of livelihood, imprisonment, exile, or death, as they did in Germany, and yet they remain silent.

The church’s failure to respond adequately to the relentless and ubiquitous promulgation of profoundly sinful ideas reveals an unbiblical doubt in the sovereignty of God; an unconscionable refusal to protect children; a willful ignorance of history; and a selfish unwillingness to experience the persecution and hatred that God has promised the followers of Christ that we will experience and that we should consider joy.

But who do we look to for inspiration today? Is it the cowardly, apostate, accommodationist, jejune, impotent, emasculated church that feebly attempts to justify its refusal to speak, or is it God’s church, that which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., William Wilberforce, Martin Niemoller, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer loved and sacrificed their comfort and lives to defend?

We reassure ourselves that if we had lived during the age of slavery or in Germany during the rise of Nazism or during the post-Civil War era when virulent racism still poisoned American life, we would never have stood idly by and done nothing, but I’m not so sure. Look at the church’s actions today when homosexuality and gender confusion are affirmed to and in our nation’s children through our public schools using our hard-earned money. Where is the church when confused and deceived men are being castrated? Where is the outrage when teens are being chemically sterilized and children are forced to share locker rooms with opposite-sex persons? Where are the church leaders who rejoice in being persecuted?

I’ve asked this question before and I will ask it again: How depraved do the ideas have to be and how young the victims to whom these ideas are disseminated before the church, starting with those who have freely chosen to assume the mantle of pastor or priest, will both feel and express outrage at the indecent, cruel, and evil practice of using public money to affirm body- and soul-destroying ideas to children?

Will the contemporary American church rise to this occasion to defend children and biblical truth, or will we become like the acquiescent church that failed to help William Wilberforce battle the slave trade, or the atrophied “moderate white church” that failed to help Martin Luther King Jr. battle racism, or the apostate Protestant church in Nazi Germany that failed to help Martin Niemoller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer battle Nazism?

I have learned over the past nine years that many “progressives” are inept at thinking analogically or logically, so I want to make clear what I’m saying and not saying. I am not comparing homosexuals and “trans”-identified persons to Nazis. I’m comparing cowardly, rationalizing religious leaders in Germany during the Nazi reign of terror to cowardly, rationalizing religious leaders in America today who would face little to no persecution for speaking truth to power.

The question as to why so many Christians, including church leaders, refuse to engage in this battle is a vexing question. Leon Podles provided one answer to that vexing question in an article entitled “Unhappy Fault: on the Integration of Anger into the Virtuous Life” that  appeared in Touchstone magazine in 2009. Podles, author of the books The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity and Sacrilege, senior editor of Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity, and founder of the Crossland Foundation, argues that “Christians have a false understanding of the nature and role of anger. It is seen as something negative, something that a Christian should not feel.” This false understanding infects the church and prevents it from being salt and light in a fallen, suffering world and that renders the church complicit in the destruction of countless lives.

He expresses what should be obvious: we should “feel deep anger at evil, at the violation of the innocent, at the oppression of the weak.”

Podles describes the suppression of hatred and anger as “emotional deformation” and exhorts the church to remember that “growth in virtue,” which must include the integration of “all emotions, including anger and hate,” is the “goal of the Christian’s moral life.”

Dr. Podles quotes Catholic psychiatrist Conrad Baars who had been a prisoner under the Nazi regime:

‘[T]here is a difference between a person who knows solely that something is evil and ought to be opposed and the one who in addition also feels hate for the evil, is angry that it is corrupting or harming fellow-men, and feels aroused to combat it courageously and vigorously.’

How often do we hear in our churches anything akin to the idea expressed by early church father John Chrysostom: “‘He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins. For unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices, it fosters negligence, and incites not only the wicked but the good to do wrong.'”

And wouldn’t the church and society look very different if they embodied Dr. Podles’ conviction that “sorrow at evil without anger at evil is a fault.”

Please read his critical article, forward it to friends, and send it to your church leaders.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Anger-and-the-Church.mp3

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Written by Casey Ryan

A Colorado baker has a right not to make a wedding cake celebrating a same-sex marriage that is against his faith, and the LGBT agenda is not a new civil rights movement, black Christian leaders said Monday outside the U.S. Supreme Court.

The nine leaders spoke in support of Jack Phillips, whose lawyers will ask the high court Dec. 5 to affirm that his free speech and religious liberty rights under the First Amendment allow him to turn down a request by two male customers to create such a cake.

“The First Amendment gives us the freedom of religion, not the freedom from religion,” Garland Hunt, senior pastor at The Father’s House, a nondenominational church in Atlanta, said at the press conference in defense of Phillips, who was not there. “The freedom of religion is an inalienable right that comes from God.”

In 2012, Phillips declined the business of two men who visited his bakery in Lakewood, Colorado, and asked him to create a cake celebrating their wedding in Massachusetts.

His Christian faith, Phillips has said, teaches that marriage is the union of a man and a woman. He also has said he doesn’t design and make cakes that go against his faith in other ways, such as being sexually suggestive or depicting Satan.

Persecution of Christians is real and “coming for America,” Hunt said.

Dean Nelson, co-founder of the Frederick Douglass Foundation of North Carolina and senior fellow for African-American affairs at the Washington-based Family Research Council, said Phillips is being attacked because he is a Christian.

“Jack is an honorable man who has served his community through his business for all people, regardless of their race, creed, color, gender, or sexual identity,” Nelson said. “Jack as a Christian is compelled to love all people, and this is what he has done for decades.”

The press conference was organized by Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal group that defends religious liberty and represents Phillips, and sponsored by the Frederick Douglass Foundation, which promotes Christian and Republican values. The foundation also has launched a website in support of Phillips called We Got Your Back, Jack.

Janet Boynes, author of Called Out: A Former Lesbian’s Discovery of Freedom, said the civil rights movement started to help blacks gain their rights and sexual behavior is not the same as skin color.

“I resent having my race compared to what other people do in bed,” Boynes said.

LGBT activists want special rights, she said, and she is concerned that people are falling for the idea that homosexuality is not a choice. American culture is in a “downward spiral,” she said.

“God only condones and blesses sex between a man and a woman in marriage,” she said.

William Avon Keen, president of the Virginia chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization co-founded by civil rights hero Martin Luther King Jr., said activists for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans have hijacked civil rights.

Unlike many LGBT activists, Keen said, he dealt with separate and unequal public facilities when he was growing up.

Keen said the Bible calls homosexuality a sin.

“We as Christians, we feel that murder is a sin. … We feel that marriage is ordained by God between a man and a woman,” Keen said. “We don’t believe in the third gender.”

He said the civil rights movement of the 1960s was “anti-sin,” and that today Christians are “too quiet” on societal issues and need to speak up.

“It is an injustice for our nation or anyone to try to force an individual to deny their faith,” Keen said.

Article originally posted on Stream.org.

**Caution: Parental Guidance Suggested**

What the tragic events of last week did not need was the distraction posed by one of the organizers of the Dallas protest, Dr. Jeff Hood, the 32-year-old bearded, bespectacled white man who is effective at one thing: self-promotion. While Selma had Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., an eloquent, dignified, and committed follower of Christ, Dallas had Dr. Hood, a narcissist committed to self-aggrandizement, sexual deviance, and syncretism.

After the shocking shootings of Dallas police officers, Hood—an admirer of Jeremiah Wright—could be found all over the airwaves, including on The Kelly File with Megyn Kelly.

Hood, a father of five young children, offers this description of himself on his website:

The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood is a Baptist pastor, theologian and activist living and working in Texas. A graduate of Auburn University, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, University of Alabama and Creighton University, Dr. Hood also concluded a Doctorate of Ministry in Queer Theology at Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University. Dr. Hood was ordained at a church within the Southern Baptist Convention in 2006 and received standing in the United Church of Christ in 2015.

The author of ten books (The Queer: An Interaction with The Gospel of John, The Queering of an American Evangelical, The Sociopathic Jesus, The Year of the Queer, Jesus on Death Row, Frances, Last Words from Texas: Meditations from the Execution Chamber, The Rearing of an American Evangelical, The Courage to Be Queer and The Basilica of the Swinging D*cks)…In 2013, Dr. Hood was awarded PFLAG Fort Worth’s Equality Award for Activism….With deep soul and a belief that God is “calling us to something queerer,” Dr. Hood is a radical mystic and prophetic voice to a closed society.

Just two months ago, the Dallas Observer profiled Hood:

Hood says he’s anointed “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” “Jesus wasn’t a Christian” is one of his sayings. He thinks “Jesus has a vagina,” [and] “Jesus is queer” is one [of his sayings] that spurred hundreds of rebukes from Christians across Facebook, calling him a “false prophet,” a “charlatan,” and “nothing more than a left-wing activist.” Some of his former congregation put him in the ranks of scandalous TV evangelists like Jim Bakker.

…

He also suffers from bipolar disorder, which sometimes means hallucinations and bouts of paranoia.

After leaving the Southern Baptist denomination and purportedly seeking treatment for his mental illness, Hood started a church for homosexuals in a Denton, Texas homosexual bar that lasted a year. Former church members’ descriptions of Hood some remarkably like descriptions of cult leaders:

“After working within the church for several months as an ‘elder,’ it became apparent that a lot of the leader’s misogynistic white male privilege kept showing, regardless of how much he would hide it under a thin veil of faux hipster economic struggling.”…When various issues or statements regarding upsetting comments that could be perceived as misogynistic or offensive were brought to the leader’s attention, they were usually met with a defensive, self-pitying martyrdom which was served to give him immunity from any and all criticism.”

Another wrote, “No criticism of the pastor was allowed. If someone challenged his behavior, he told lies about them to the congregation. If someone brought up problematic elements of the church, they were immediately silenced. It wasn’t until I spoke with other people who had left that we began to realize the amount of lies that we had been told about [one another]. I left the church because I experienced firsthand the pastor’s lies, manipulation and lack of boundaries.

For a time, Hood was involved with the largest homosexual church in America, Cathedral of Hope United Church of Christ (UCC) in Dallas, but like so many of his endeavors, this relationship was short-lived. After Hood was arrested and briefly jailed in Ferguson, Missouri, where, according to Hood, he was one of the protest leaders, Hood hurled epithets at his former church leaders at the Cathedral of Hope, complaining that “ those chicken sh*t a**holes…didn’t even announce that I had been arrested at church.”

Hood and his wife Emily support their five children under five (including two sets of twins) by “being creative, she as an artist and he as a writer, but they also receive help from friends and Hood’s 88-year-old grandfather, who still doesn’t quite understand his grandson’s ministry.”

On his blog, a picture of a deeply troubled  man and heretic emerges.

Hood expresses his appreciation for the “public witness” of Reverend Charles Moore who lit himself on fire to express “his frustration with the United Methodist Church’s position on human sexuality, opposition to the death penalty, disdain for racism (especially in his hometown of Grand Saline) and his deep anger at Southern Methodist University’s decision to house the George W. Bush Presidential Center.”

Hood asserts that  “Jesus sinned. Jesus was a racist y’all.” He finds everything “[f]rom the historical personhood of Adam and Eve to ideas of substitutionary atonement to a literal hell to the impending return of Jesus” to be “really problematic doctrines.”

And here is how he concluded one of his sermons:

Love your neighbor…put down your gun.

Love your neighbor…open your borders.

Love your neighbor…embrace the revolutionary spirit of our age.

Love your neighbor…be queer.

Last December, Hood posted an obscene novella he’s penned, a perverse, poorly written tale that, like John Bunyan’s A Pilgrim’s Progress, has a main character  named “Christian” whose story begins with a sojourn in jail. Reading The Basilica of Swinging D*cks offers a glimpse into Hood’s spiritually darkened mind. The rambling story is replete with references to homoerotic sex and masturbation. The first-person narrator Christian describes even the church building in sacrilegious terms: “At the top of the Cathedral, we placed a phallic steeple shooting up to heaven with a cross coming out of the domed tip.”

With the first black president fomenting social and political division, with public school teachers indoctrinating children with an imbalanced picture of American history, and with rebellious syncretists preaching heresies in our churches, it’s no wonder that racial tensions are escalating. Hood, a mentally ill, narcissistic heretic deserves neither pulpits nor press conferences.

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White House press secretary Josh Earnest said “Every public official in our democracy is subject to the rule of law. No one is above the law. That applies to the president of the United States and that applies to the county clerk of Rowan County, Ky., as well.”

Really? That applies to the president? Well, did it apply to President Barack Obama when he instructed Attorney General Eric Holder to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which was the law of the land—a bipartisan law passed by huge majorities in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives and signed into law by Bill Clinton?

Did those who now oppose Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis‘ actions also oppose Attorney General Eric Holder’s refusal to defend the Defense of Marriage Act?

What about the refusal of Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez and state-attorney’s general in Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Virginia to defend DOMA?

What about the refusal of California Governor Jerry Brown’s and California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ refusals to defend Prop 8.

The Obergefelle decision, in which 5 unelected justices imposed same-sex faux-marriage on all of America, was as little grounded in the text and history of the Constitution as Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade. Does defying a lawless act constitute lawlessness?

Those who oppose Kim Davis’ actions ought to read Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in order to better understand when civil disobedience is justified:

One may well ask, “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: there are just laws, and there are unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “An unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law.

Despite what some conservatives argue, neither religious liberty nor civil disobedience is  reserved for just those employed in the private sector.

When Eric Holder announced that the Department of Justice would no longer defend the duly enacted DOMA law, he said, “decisions at any level not to defend individual laws must be exceedingly rare. They must be reserved only for exceptional – truly exceptional – circumstances.’”

My friends, such a time is this.

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Six weeks ago, I was privileged to be in the delivery room when my seventh grandchild was born. The only response to the doctor’s words “It’s a boy” were tears of ineffable joy.

This morning I heard those same words when a Planned Parenthood medical assistant plucked casually through the bloody remains of a just-butchered baby and announced in a  jubilant tone, “another boy!” in the newest Center for Medical Progress video:

Last week, another conscience-deformed obstetrician, Dr. Jen Gutner, writing a defense of Planned Parenthood for the New Republic, criticized the use of the phrase “baby parts” when referring to the head, livers, lungs, and limbs of human fetuses:

These are not “baby parts.” Whether a woman has a miscarriage or an abortion, the tissue specimen is called “products of conception.” In utero, i.e. during pregnancy, we use the term “embryo” from fertilization to ten weeks gestation and “fetus” from ten weeks to birth. The term baby is medically incorrect as it doesn’t apply until birth. Calling the tissue “baby parts” is a calculated attempt to anthropomorphize an embryo or fetus. It is a false image—a ten to twelve week fetus looks nothing like a term baby—and is medically incorrect. 

Critical care nurse Easten Niphakis responds to Gutner’s fanciful thinking:

Every human being, alive or dead, is a product of conception, so technically Gutner is correct, but that’s irrelevant when it comes to whether or not we have the right to take life. It’s amusing that she said pro-life people are trying to “anthropomorphize” fetuses. It’s actually not possible to anthropomorphize a human being. To see an unborn baby as human is simply to align your perspective with reality. To de-anthropomorphize a baby in the womb is to detach yourself from reality, probably to make it easier to justify the unspeakable.

Gutner claims that referring to the “product of conception” as a baby creates a “false image” in that a “10-12 week fetus looks nothing like a term baby.” Well, a 10-week-old fetus looks as unlike a full-term baby as an 8-week-old fetus looks like a 36-week-old “fetus,” and yet Gunter likely calls both of them “fetuses” despite how different they look. What’s truly remarkable is how like a human a 12-week-old fetus looks.

Gutner may want to have a conversation with the Denver Planned Parenthood abortionist featured in the fourth video, Dr. Sabita Ginde, because Ginde refers to the “product of conception” as a baby. She also wonders, “do people want brain?…Do people do stuff with eyeballs?” Yes, Gutner, these anthropomorphized products of conception have human brains and human eyeballs.

Gutner also argues that “Hearing medical professionals talk casually about products of conception may seem distasteful to some, but not to doctors. Medical procedures are gory by nature.”

It isn’t the “product of conception” that’s gory. It’s the crushing and dismembering of the “products of conception” that is gory. And though some people wouldn’t have the stomach for performing surgery, no one is offended by descriptions of surgery performed to restore health or function or reduce pain. What offends many Americans are barbarous surgical procedures performed to extinguish life.

“Progressives”—who take umbrage when conservatives cite religious convictions in defense of preborn babies (or true marriage)—often quote Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s paraphrase of a passage from a sermon by abolitionist and minister Thomas Parker who wrote this about the moral universe:

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.

Parker goes on to say something at least as applicable to abortion as slavery:

Things refuse to be mismanaged long. Jefferson trembled when he thought of slavery and remembered that God is just. Ere long all America will tremble. 

For 41 long years, many Americans have trembled at the thought of the legalized slaughter of babies in the womb. Ere long, it is hoped, all America will tremble. 

In an 800-word CNN article about this most recent video, there is not one word about the jubilant “another boy” comment. Not one word about the Planned Parenthood staff mentioning the liver, brain, and legs of the dead baby. The article did, however, include Planned Parenthood executive vice president Dawn Laguens’ statement of moral indignation:

It is a profoundly offensive violation of privacy and dignity that anti-abortion extremists entered our laboratory under false pretenses and are now broadcasting video of a part of the process for a safe abortion….Publicizing secret video footage of a woman’s abortion process is a grossly offensive act that should be rejected by all regardless of political perspective.

The grossly offensive act that should be rejected by all is the legalized slaughter of human beings. The other grossly offensive act that should be rejected by all is using the hard-earned money of Americans to subsidize the murder of tiny, helpless children in the womb.

Ten weeks ago, my grandson Everett was no less human and no less deserving of legal protection from the death merchants at Planned Parenthood than he is now. It is almost unbearable to write what should be unthinkable:  In this country, my grandson could have been legally killed ten weeks ago—using my money—and his body parts sold donated for research.

My 90-year-old WWII veteran father—great-grandfather to Everett—is right: This is not the country he fought to defend.

National Day of Protest against Planned Parenthood
Saturday, August 22, 9:00 to 11:00 A.M.
Planned Parenthood, 3051 E New York St, Aurora (map)
Lead by the Pro-Life Action League

Albert Einstein once said, “Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.”

He was right.

In the aftermath of the Arizona religious freedom skirmish, I have a few questions for those who would presume to compel religious business owners, under penalty of law, to “provide goods and services” to homosexuals in a way that violates that business owner’s conscience.

To wit:

• Should a homosexual baker be forced to make a “God Hates Fags” cake for Westboro Baptist Church, simply because its members claim to be Christian?
• Should a black printer be forced to develop and print thousands of “White Power!” flyers for a skinhead rally just because the potential customer is white?
• Should a Christian florist be compelled to create and provide black floral arrangements to a hell-bound customer for her upcoming Satanist ritual?
• Should a “progressive,” environmentalist sign-maker be required to design and manufacture “Global Warming Is a Farce” signs for a tea party rally?
• Should a Muslim photographer, commissioned by San Francisco’s “Folsom Street Fair,” be forced to document that vile event – rife with nudity and public sex – simply because the customers identify as “gay”?
• Should a “gay married” lesbian hotel owner – a card-carrying member of GLAAD – be required, under threat of incarceration, to host and cater a fundraiser for the “National Organization for Marriage,” a group that opposes so-called “marriage equality”?

If you said no to any of the above, and you opposed Arizona’s cowardly vetoed SB1062, then you’re logically inconsistent and need to re-evaluate your position.

To clarify – liberals, I know you have a difficult time understanding the “Constitution” with its outdated “Bill of Rights” and all – I’m not talking about refusing business to someone just because he appears effeminate or she appears butch, or even when that someone is an “out and proud” homosexual.

I’ve never even heard of a case where a Christian baker randomly refused to provide baked goods – such as a birthday cake – to any homosexual, absent a scenario in which those goods endorsed a message the baker finds repugnant (rainbow “pride” cupcakes, “gay wedding” cakes and the like). I’ve never heard of a single instance in which a Christian business owner arbitrarily said to a homosexual: “We don’t serve your kind here.”

And neither can the left provide such an instance. Because it doesn’t happen. If it did happen, it would be front-page news for a month.

No, I’m specifically referring to scenarios that have occurred – and continue to occur – with alarming frequency. Situations in which Christian business owners are being sued, fined or even threatened with jail time for politely declining to apply their God-given time and talent to create goods or services that require they violate deeply held – and constitutionally protected – religious beliefs.

It really is that black and white. This was never about the person. It was always about the message. It was never about “discrimination.” It was always about liberty.

Freedom, man.

Because ‘Merica.

While from a constitutional standpoint it’s not even necessary, that’s all the drafters of SB1062 and similar such bills have endeavored to do. Because government has begun alienating unalienable rights at a level unparalleled since passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, legislators have attempted to merely re-affirm the already existing right for religious business owners to live out their faith without fear of persecution or government reprisal.

Seriously, unless you’re fascist, who could disagree? Nobody should ever be forced to spend their time and talent to endorse – whether directly or indirectly – a message or event that he or she finds repugnant. I don’t care if you’re Christian, pagan, black, white, “gay” or straight. That’s your God-given right as an American.

As a constitutionalist, I’ll remain consistent – will you? If you’re a homosexual photographer, for instance, and, for whatever reason, you oppose natural man-woman marriage, and you choose to exercise your right to only photograph “gay weddings,” then knock yourself out. If I come knocking and want you to photograph my wedding, and you tell me to pound sand, I’ll suck it up and take my business down the street.

And I won’t even demand you be thrown in jail for it.

See how easy that was? I mean, you’re a liberal. You’re “pro-choice,” right?

Starting to get it?

Well, let me be clear so there’s no misunderstanding. If I’m a business owner and someone comes in requesting goods or services that would require me to violate my conscience – especially my biblically-based, sincerely held religious beliefs – I will not, under any circumstances, provide those goods or services. This is my absolute, non-negotiable, constitutionally guaranteed right.

No debate. No question. No compromise.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.”

Those are wise words from a wise man. For purposes of today’s debate, however, those words require a slight contextual modification. No “anti-discrimination” law that presumes to remove the constitutional right of business owners to operate their business according to conscience is worth the paper it’s written on.

Poo paper for puppy.

So, liberals, knock off the Alinskyite obfuscation and conflation. Quit throwing around all this “Jim Crow” crap. It belittles the legitimate civil rights struggle and makes you look stupid. You’ve created an ugly and offensive straw man and beat the stuffing out of him.

I rarely agree with “gay” activist Andrew Sullivan, but on the subject at hand, he at least has a remedial understanding. Gloss over all the obligatory “homophobe” and “bigot” nonsense, and he recently made a few good points on “The Dish”:

I favor maximal liberty in these cases. The idea that you should respond to a hurtful refusal to bake a wedding cake by suing the bakers is a real stretch to me. … There are plenty of non-homophobic bakers in Arizona. We run the risk of becoming just as intolerant as the anti-gay bigots [read: Christians], if we seek to coerce people into tolerance. If we value our freedom as gay people in living our lives the way we wish, we should defend that same freedom to sincere religious believers and also, yes, to bigots and haters. You do not conquer intolerance with intolerance. … I’m particularly horrified by the attempt to force anyone to do anything they really feel violates their conscience, sense of self, or even just comfort.

And besides, as constitutional law expert Jan LaRue recently observed in an email: “If they believe their own rhetoric, that we’re hateful bigots, why would they even risk eating our cakes?”

Why indeed?

Yuck.